Online status timeout - What's yours set to?

[cdub]

What's yours set to?

Mines set to 60. (Default is 15)

 

[Reverie]

I typically also set mine to 60 minutes. No real big reason - I feel like 15 minutes is too short, but at least 30 minutes should be good.

 

[prophet]

I have mine set to 60 minutes. I feel like 15 is too short but 30 could be a decent middle ground. No particular reason on the 60 but I find it to be pretty standard nowadays.

 

[Cedric]

Our is 60 as well. I feel that length is about right. 15 is too short, more than 60 is too long.

 

[Tracy]

I have mine set to 10 minutes... really don't care to "act" like folks are online for longer than they are, and 10 minutes seemed a decent compromise.

 

[cdub]

I have mine set to 10 minutes... really don't care to "act" like folks are online for longer than they are, and 10 minutes seemed a decent compromise.

Since activity on my site is so seasonal, sometimes I worry that if people don't see people online then they will think the site is not active and not sign up to post.

Of course it's new activity and threads that also make people sign up and post.

I also have the online members high up on the right sidebar in desktop as I want members to see that other members are on the site. Maybe it entices people to be more active?

I feel like if I change it to the default now it'll seem like there's been a huge drop in traffic to the site. (And ironically there has been right now as application season is pretty much wrapping up)

 

[Arantor]

The problem is that it also misrepresents the activity of the site - because someone who looks online might not have been online for 59 minutes.

I find it interesting that the newer gen of platforms (Discourse etc.) simply do away with making this particularly obvious; there's no online marker shown in thread, I'm not even sure you *can* see who's online in a Discourse, it only wants to show me last post time on the little popup profile, and while you can get last online for an individual in their full profile, there's no convenient summary of who's online right now, and I suspect that's for the best.

On the one hand there is the 'oh no, people aren't online, the site is dead', but the other is... if you don't tell them, they can't jump to that conclusion. And instead will have to look at the content. Of course, if you're not producing regular new content (but constantly have people online) that's *also* not a good sign.

It's similar to how in the olden times we had 'Most people online was x on abc date' - if that date was in the recent past, it's fine, but if that date is a year or more ago, and it's way out compared to other stats (e.g. online right now 100, most online today 200, most online ever 5000 10 years ago), it's usually a sign that things are in decline. Better to not advertise that situation - but of course, this is why Discourse etc. *doesn't*.

It is a distraction from the content.